Annotations for Creative Process: Characters

Urania and his father are invented characters.

Well, I suppose there were many Uranias in Trujillo's life, you know? But the character is invented.

Her father is invented, but it follows more or less a very close collaborator of Trujillo, who was, well, falling disgrace. And suddenly, as a Cerebrito Cabral, lost everything in just a few hours, you know? His money, his power, his friends, his prestigious life.

In writing this book, did you put any of yourself into your characterization of Balaguer?

If I put myself into...

Your characterization of Balaguer?

Well, not consciously, at least, no.

He's a fascinating character.

Was he really like that?

Well, I don't think I have been disloyal to what he really is. Maybe he's more complex. Maybe he's less complex than my character. I don't know.

But I had three long conversations with him when I was writing the novel, three. And he was so clever to evade difficult questions.

He was a kind of, how do you say in English, an anguilla.

An eel. Ooh!

He was absolutely, um. And I said to him, Dr. Balaguer, you are a cultivated man. You have read a lot.

A poet!

You have written quite decently, you know?

How could you for 31 years serve with such loyalty and competence, you know, against us and live surrounded by criminals and by the worst kind of human being?

And he said to me, look, when I was young, I wanted to be a politician. I had many sisters to take care of. If I went into exile, I wouldn't have been a politician. And I wondered if I would have been able to support my sisters.

So the only way in which you could do politics during those days was with Trujillo. So that's what I did.

And since the beginning, I said I'm not going to do two things: I'm not going to participate in sexual orgies with Trujillo [laughter] and I'm not going to steal one dollar.

And he said to me, and I have done this. I have never steal one dollar, and I have never participated in a Trujillo orgy [laughter]

I said this is the secret of your power? [laughter]

Well. Well, you also say in passing that the phrase was never for any reason lose your composure was his motto.

That's right.

Never lose your composure. With all this happening around you?

Another wonderful phrase of Balaguer was in my five presidencies, corruption has arrived to the door of my office, but it has never entered my office. [laughter]

Well, he's a poor man. He has no money, only power. He has got tremendous power, but no, he's a no, I think it's only power. That was his only passion in life, you know?

It was such a quiet colorless. Withdrawn....

Oh, yeah, he was very quiet. He managed to fool Trujillo, which was very difficult, you know? He was put in the presidency because Trujillo said publicly to many collaborators, you know, Balaguer has no ambitions. [laughter]

That's the reason why he must be the president. He has no ambitions.

But he really did, though, didn't he?

Of course.

I think he had, but he was so clever. He knew that the last symptom of political ambition was the end of his career with Trujillo.

In direct contrast, you have your characterization of the, what's his name, Hugo Romero.

Yes.

Who should have been the leader of the revolution, and then suddenly he froze and was not able to. What is his story?

But he hated Trujillo because Trujillo humiliated him systematically, publicly.

He was a sewage, for example.

Yeah, exactly.

And he was in the conspiracy, and he was, well, he had the responsibility of the coup d'etat, the establishing of a military junta, to call elections, you know? He had the green lights of the United States, of the State Department.

But he wanted to see the corpse. He said that. I need to see the corpse.

But then he was paralyzed. And I don't think this was because he was a coward, because he was not a coward. He was very courageous during the three months in which Ramfis tortured him in an incredible way with doctors who resuscitated him in order to be tortured again, you know?

All testimonies are that he was very, very courageous during this incredible, you know, agony.

But he had Trujillo inside himself. Trujillo was there like a super ego. And I think that's what happened with millions of Dominicans. Trujillo was inside them, you know, and governing their instincts, their elementary fears. And that was horrendous, you know, the kind of mental slavery. And I think Pupo Roman is the best, is the emblematic case of this.

But the expectations were there. I mean, he had so many moments at the point of the assassination when he could have acted, could have done something. And he's just unable to...

He was unable because he was paralyzed. He was paralyzed because if you kill God, you became really so insecure and confused. And that's what happened to him, you know? God was dead.

What do you do in a world without God? He hated this God, but it was God, you know?

It's the only explanation because he knew perfectly well that he would pay, that he would be known, that he was in the conspiracy.

Did you change your mind about Trujillo as you wrote the book at all? Did you get any different feelings about...

Oh, no, no, not at all.

I always, as in the case of Trujillo, I have chosen themes to write novels about in a way in which my impression is that I am not so free to chosen them, that I've been chosen by these themes because something has happened to me or something has been there in my life that is pushing me towards certain themes and excluding others. And I have the impression when I write a novel that my whole personality is involved and not only reason but also unreason, not only knowledge but also irrational drives, you know, emotions.

I was partly thinking something along those lines when I asked before whether you changed your mind about Trujillo when you were writing the book. And I wondered, does the book change as you write it? Are you surprised by things that come up?

Oh, yes. Yes, I am.

Oh, yes.

Always the book, well, the novel is always different of what was my first idea of the novel, always. And sometimes very, very different, you know?

Even in the case of Trujillo, which I knew more or less what would be the structure, the trajectory of the story. At the end, for example, I never thought that Urania would become such an important character, maybe the most important character.

Well, I'm reading a lot of books because the novel I am writing. I am writing about Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin.

About what?

Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin. Flora Tristan was the grandmother of of Paul Gauguin, the painter.

A very interesting character, 19th century woman who was a social agitator. Very courageous, very idealistic, and with a tragic history.

And his personality was very similar to the--to her grandchild because Gauguin was, as her, so stubborn and also idealistic, you know.

They were looking for the paradise, different kind of paradises.

She wanted a paradise of social justice, of equality, no more discrimination of women, total equality. But it was a paradise, you know?

So she went into all the anarchist sects and she was a San Simonian, a San Simon follower, a Charles Fourier follower.

And finally, as she couldn't fit, you know, exactly in any of these movements and sects, you know, she created her own sect.

But it was this persecution of paradise. And I think Gauguin was the same you know. Gauguin went to La Martinique, to Panama, and then to Tahiti, and finally to the Marquesan Islands looking for the paradise.

Not a social paradise. He was not interested at all in social justice, on the contrary. [laughter]

But a paradise of beauty.

Beauty is something which was shared by the whole society. And he saw that this was impossible to reach in Europe because art, beauty had become in Europe a monopoly of a very small coterie of artists, collectors, critics.

And that art was completely cut from the common people. And he had this idea that only in primitive cultures, beauty was still as religion, as a common patrimony, a common expression.

And he went to look for this and looking for more primitive cultures. And as he didn't find it, he invented it in his paintings.

But the personalities of both were very, very close, you know?

One of the curiosities of Trujillo in the book is the fact that he has such a dislike of the arts broadly, has no appreciation or understanding.

No, not only, only

Clothing, his dress.

The only time that he was interested in literature was when Balaguer was incorporated to the Academy and read this incredible discourse in which he compared Trujillo to God.

It was an ode to Trujillo.

Well, Trujillo was there. And Balaguer, in a very well-written piece, said, well, did the the Dominican Republic has survived? 400 years of catastrophes, of invasions, of civil wars, of hurricanes, earthquakes.

Because until 1930, God took care of our country. But in 1930, God said, well, it's enough. I'm going to give this responsibility to someone else. And so Trujillo took this responsibility. And Trujillo said many times that for the first time, he was really impressed with a literary text.

And I think he really believed that Balaguer was right when he said that he had taken this responsibility and he has replaced God with this responsibility to save the Dominican Republic of disintegration. [laughter]

But for the rest, he despised the literary fantasies of his wife. His wife published two books.

She didn't write them, though.

No, she didn't.

But she published a book of.